Mosquito saliva alone has profound effects on the human immune system (2018)

Re:Mosquito saliva alone has profound effects on the human i... by fezzez on Monday August 23, 2021 @06:07PM (#28282595)

Mosquitos are the closest thing to a predator that we have. They're by far the animal that kills the most humans (outside of other humans), and it's been that way for at least 10s of thousands of years.

We already know that billions of humans have genetic mutations that specifically are there to protect us from mosquitos. So I'm not surprised that mosquitos have specific adaptations made for us either.

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Re:Mosquito saliva alone has profound effects on the human i... by graderjs on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @07:17AM (#28287285)

True†. This is a great insight. So...why wipe them out? Don't you think we can learn from them? I know people are not advocating for wiping out every mosquito, only the killer ones. But still, from a purely predator dynamic, we should at least make sure we know all there is to know about this 'apex predator' (possibly a stretch, but), before we wipe them from the face of the Earth, no? :p ;) xx

†I actually think we are symbionts. But people commonly just don't understand enough about how everything works to clearly see the benefits we get yet.

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Re:Mosquito saliva alone has profound effects on the human i... by joncrane on Monday August 23, 2021 @09:49PM (#28284292)

>They're by far the animal that kills the most humans

Do you have a source for that?

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Re:Mosquito saliva alone has profound effects on the human i... by jcims on Monday August 23, 2021 @10:05PM (#28284383)

Not a source but a little bit of googling and you'll find estimates that malaria may have killed half the people that have ever lived.

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Re:Mosquito saliva alone has profound effects on the human i... by pcurve on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @04:16AM (#28286244)

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Most-Lethal-Animal-Mosquit...

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